Alice Through a Looking Glass
by Call It Hope
Summary: In Alice Longbottom's final hours, she becomes lucid enough to take Neville's wand and use it to extract her own, unblemished memories for him. Now it's up to him to go through the painful process of gaining knowledge about the parents he was never able to truly know during their lifetime. Please review, thanks!


The ward was nearly empty now. The few occupants left were huddled in bed, making no noise other than faint mutterings which practically passed for snoring in this wing. After a brief 'goodnight' to each of the patients, the two ward healers were free from the ward for an hour or two—a necessary break because, as one healer said to her colleague,

"I'd rather be covered in dragon dung and blood from noon 'til night than stay another moment in there, watching the decay of human minds."

She was new. They usually had to switch out healers for that ward every few weeks—there had been too many healer suicides when they tried to have permanent healers. Her colleague had been there longer, seen the ruin of that ward and what it had done to people—hell, it was she who had been the first to discover Healer Williamson's body the morning after he had set his mind to eternal rest.

"I don't know how he does it," she murmured in agreement, jerking her head back towards the closed door of the ward.

"No," the other agreed. They were silent as they poured themselves a cup of the lukewarm tea provided for their breaks. Each thought reverently of the man sitting by the side of the bed at the end of the ward. He had hardly moved for days. Just sat there, with all his papers, writing little notes in the margins, crossing out some words and putting checkmarks near others. Waiting.

The man in question was a young one, one whose weathered face showed him to be more comfortable outdoors than in. In the near-darkness of the ward, it was difficult to tell what the color of his eyes were, but it wasn't the hue that made them remarkable. Their expression was. They held both decision and fear, resignation and defiance, misery and relief. The lines about them were set—determined—yet whenever the form in the bed in front of him moved, he winced.

He wasn't sure what this was going to mean to him or what it would feel like. His father's death had nearly sent him into a depression. He still didn't quite understand how. Perhaps it was because the message hadn't reached him in time. He had come to his mother's bedside three times this month at the warning of St. Mungo's. Each time, she had come through-miraculously, so the doctors told him. He didn't mind being called from his duties at Hogwarts. Any son would do the same-and there was some vague idea in his mind that his father would forgive him for missing _his_ death so long as he was there for _hers_.

It was a cold moonbeam that finally illuminated her opened eyes. He nearly choked when he saw her staring at him. The past few times he'd come, she had not been so responsive. He leaned forward, grasped her hand.

"I'm here, Mum. It's Neville."

At his words, a wavering, uncertain smile stretched across his mother's mouth, and her hand was suddenly in front of him, hovering in midair. Waiting.

He grasped it warmly and leaned over to kiss her wrinkled cheek. He thought he heard her sigh slightly, but it could have been his imagination-this whole episode seemed almost like a dream. She had never been so responsive to him.

As he sat back down in his chair, hardly noticing the strewn papers that had fallen off of his lap in his excitement, he saw that she had something in her hands. Something long, smooth-dear God.

For half a second, he wondered if he could grapple with her himself and save the floor's inhabitants a disturbed sleep, but that was foolish. He knew that.

"HEALER MORGAN!" he bellowed over his shoulder, hoping to high heavens that he would be heard by someone qualified to assist him. He glanced back at his mother, who was slowly raising the wand to her temple, a strangely peaceful smile on her face. Her mouth moved, but he couldn't quite make out what she was saying.

"Please give me back the wand, Mum—please."

"Mmmrs."

" _Please give me back the wand._ "

" _Mmmrs_."

"Mum, _please_."

She gazed at him, her eyes wide and wistful. He felt almost abashed, standing there, trying to wrest his wand out of his own mother's hand. In that moment of his indecision, she snatched the wand from him, pointed it at her temple, and drew out a few thin, silvery wisps. Neville, only partially understanding what was happening, fished one of his sample tubes out of his pocket, uncorked it, and offered it to her. The smile that lit up her face was small, but it was so grateful, so adoring, that Neville hardly noticed her take the test tube from his hand.

"Mum…"

She dropped the wisps into it and held it out to him. He stared at it for a moment and shook his head.

"I don't understand."

"Mmmrs."

 _Memories_. Neville stared in awe at the fluid in the tube. His mother's memories. But—but surely they would be fuzzy at best, terribly confused and just plain wrong. The clattering of his wand to the floor drew him out of the trance.

" _Mum_!" But she was gone. She had left while he was contemplating the bottle.

And as the Healers rushed back in, alerted by the vitals alerts from the other patients in the ward, and as the sounds of groaning and sobbing and confused grumblings washed over the ward, Neville sat there, staring at the peaceful face of the mother he had never been able to really know when she was alive.


End file.
